Duvall's "Get Low" Not the End of 50-Year Career

Receive the latest popcornbiz updates in your inbox

Robert Duvall is marking 50 years in show business with his award buzz-worthy performance in "Get Low." But don't think for a moment that he's thinking about retiring.

"There's stuff left," he said at the "Get Low" press day. "Even as we speak."

The 79-year-old actor did take time to discuss some career highlights and his longtime collaboration with Horton Foote who wrote the screenplay for Duvall's first movie, "To Kill a Mockingbird" as well as 1983's "Tender Mercies." (the film in which Duvall won an Oscar).

"I've had a wonderful career. If I had only worked with Horton Foote and Francis Ford Coppola (of "Godfather" fame), I would have had a wonderful mini-career," he said. "But I had many other opportunities as well."

The writing in "Get Low," he noted, was much like Foote's screen adaptation of "Mockingbird." But he said there were only a few similarities in the hermit he plays in his new movie, Felix Bush, as compared to his famous Boo Radley in "Mockingbird."

"They are both hermetic types, but very different," he said. "This guy (Felix Bush) could have been a lawyer, a teacher, a doctor. That guy (Radley) was a little off mentally. But many people are comparing them."

Duvall and his "Get Low" co-star Lucas Black will star next in the independent golf film "Seven Days in Utopia."

One thing he's not keen to get back into is the theater. Duvall received rave reviews for "American Buffalo" on Broadway in 1977. But he hasn't been back since.

"I like film," he said simply. "I don't like to do things seven or eight times a week. It's like eating steak every night. You get tired."